One Too Many

Having a few sips of alcohol while you drive a car on the highway is legal in some parts of Florida, including Brevard County.

Defenders of the custom say governments have no business telling people what they can drink in the privacy of their cars.

They say a statewide ban on the practice would be disappointing to football fans accustomed to knocking back a few on the way to Tallahassee and Gainesville. They say that it's a working man's right to pop the top on a can of beer on the way home after a hard day's labor in the sun.

They say it would harm sales at stores that cater to the practice and that a ban would be hard to enforce. And then there's the argument that tourists also appreciate the convenience of drinking while they drive.

Those arguments are nonsense.

Twenty-two states prohibit drinking alcohol in cars. This year what has become a perennial effort to add Florida to the list unfortunately failed again in the Legislature.

Thus some local governments have stepped in. Orlando, St. Cloud, Kissimmee and Fort Lauderdale all have open-container ordinances, as do Orange, Lee and Broward counties.

The logic is simple: In a state with some of the nation's toughest drunken driving laws, letting people drink behind the wheel is lunacy. It only encourages a deadly practice.

Brevard County commissioners considered an open-container law several months ago but decided not to act until they saw what the Legislature did. Now that legislators have taken no action, Chairman Thad Altman says he will renew his efforts to get an open-container ordinance.

Mr. Altman deserves support from the community and his fellow commissioners.

Police, the courts and the public have realized that drunken driving is a serious, too often deadly crime. Letting people have ''one on the road'' is no way to get the message across that drinking and driving don't mix.